Yep, it's really happening: Illinois — Illinois! — is in the Rose Bowl. The game they play on New Year's Day. That one. Seriously. Zook in Pasadena. Zooooooooook.

We're fully aware that Illinois doesn't particularly deserve to play in the Grandaddy, and that they're probably gonna get killed. No matter! We like to pretend that the bowls still have any segment of legitimacy and tradition, so the Big Ten vs. the Pac-10, that's what we get. Which means in a season where a slot in the Motor City Bowl would have made us happy ends up in Pasadena. Ron Zook truly pisses intensity.

By the way, we're not making the trip to Pasadena, but for the first time in recent memory, we might actually be up on New Year's Day by 5 p.m.